Art. 30 is designed to safeguard the constitution of a conciliation commission in the absence of timely appointments by the parties, through appointments by the Chairman (Art. 5). Art. 30 is substantively identical to the first sentence of Art. 38, its counterpart in the Chapter on Arbitration. The only difference is the substitution of “Commission” for “Tribunal” and “conciliator or conciliators” for “arbitrator or arbitrators” as well as the reference to Art. 28 rather than 36. The second sentence of Art. 38, dealing with the nationality of arbitrators appointed by the Chairman, is not reflected in Art. 30 or elsewhere in the Chapter on Conciliation (see Art. 29, para. 5).

All drafts to Art. 30 were substantively identical to the parallel drafts to the first sentence of Art. 38 (History, Vol. I, pp. 148, 150, 180, 182). The debates on what became Art. 30 (History, Vol. II, pp. 152/3, 262/3, 412/3, 783, 790/1, 1035) did not lead to any differentiations in the text. There were doubts about the usefulness of the appointment of conciliators by the Chairman since conciliation was a strictly voluntary matter and a refusal by one party to appoint a conciliator was bound to lead to the failure of the conciliation effort.